Kieran Donaghy was on Thursday’s OTB AM for this week’s Shot Clock.
Donaghy was speaking about a new initiative between the Mayo LGFA and Top Oil which will see the county’s senior team become the first ladies inter-county panel to have their fuel expenses completely covered.
While it’s certainly a welcome development for the members of the Mayo women's team, Donaghy was stunned to learn that they are the only ladies side that have their travel expenses covered.
“I’m absolutely shocked the ladies don’t get mileage for traveling to training, I don’t know what that’s about. It should be a greater thing that’s looked at overall by the GAA.
“I can’t believe that some of them are paying for their own train journeys and their own mileage going down.
“It seems mad to me that all the men get paid mileage to come from Dublin to train but the ladies don’t. It was something that I just took for granted,” Donaghy commented.
Smaller stadiums mean better atmospheres
Donaghy was also speaking about how good the Leinster Hurling Championship has been this year when the topic of falling crowd numbers in football came up.
“The Galway-Kilkenny game in Nowlan Park was absolutely epic, electric atmosphere. The Dublin-Galway game, Dublin were fantastic in Parnell Park. Just the atmosphere at these games [is great].
“We even talked about it in the Football Championship, we’re trying to get bigger crowds into more suitable venues. These were epic encounters,” Donaghy commented.
After the Leinster Football semi-final, double-header only managed to draw a crowd of 36,126 there were calls made to move more games out of Croke Park. While the crowd in Parnell Park was much smaller for the Dublin-Galway clash, the atmosphere was far better.
“You put that Dublin-Galway game into Croke Park with these huge wide-open spaces and Galway probably get the win because of the space.
“There’s more space in Croke Park, there’s less of an atmosphere where it was real partisan stuff there [Parnell Park] the last day,” Donaghy said.
The semi-final football double-header will likely fail to live long in the memories of any of those in attendance, which is a stark contrast to that of the hurling on show in the nation’s capital the weekend after.
“Once you have a great atmosphere players raise their games always and you get better games and the people that go will have a better experience.
“Kids are blown away by having an experience like the last day. I’m sure every young Dublin hurling fan would’ve been blown away by Parnell Park last Saturday night,” Donaghy said.
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